Californians Can Get $300 Extra a Week in Unemployment Benefits — for Now ?

Californians Can Get $300 Extra a Week in Unemployment Benefits — for Now 

Tanu Henry | California Black Media 

On July 25, the federal government’s Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program ended for most states, leaving millions of Californians without the extra cash many of them had been relying on for months to make ends meet. 

The $600 extra in federal stimulus pay was added cushion to the amount states already provide for their residents in unemployment insurance payments. Created for Americans who lost their jobs due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the program was authorized by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) act, which was signed into federal law in March. 

Then, last week, the California Employment Development Department (EDD) announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) approved California’s application to participate in the federal Lost Wages Assistance (LWA) program — funding that President Donald Trump authorized by memorandum Aug. 8. The LWA program provides $4.5 billion to California from which $300 extra in unemployment insurance benefits will be paid to individuals for three weeks. 

“Since the beginning of this pandemic, we have sought to maximize federally funded unemployment benefits to Californians. These benefits are critical for the basic security of families and communities and for our economy, which have been so devastated by the virus and its financial impacts,” said California Labor Secretary Julie A. Su after the EDD’s announcement. 

To qualify, unemployed Californians would have to already be eligible to receive at least $100 each week in unemployment benefits and they would have to provide proof that their job loss resulted from the coronavirus crisis. 

Although the U.S. House of Representatives has approved a fifth stimulus bill, the $3-trillion-dollar ”Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, the Senate has not brought it up for debate or vote. That bill includes an extension of the $600 federal supplement through Jan. 31, 2021. 

Senate Republicans have countered the $600-a-week proposal in the HEROES act with a $400 weekly payment in UI benefits. Democrats turned down that offer in negotiations. 

Some Republican Senators opposed to the $600 payment approved in the last stimulus package argued that it does not provide an incentive for workers who were laid off to look for work. 

“We cannot encourage people to make more money in unemployment than they do in employment,” Sen. Tim Scott (D-SC) pointed out. 

While the U.S. Congress decides what should be included in the next stimulus package, for now unemployed Californians can apply to get $300 a week extra in unemployment benefits dating back to Aug. 1. 

“As we modernize and strengthen the state’s unemployment insurance delivery system, we will continue to leverage any additional resources the federal government makes available,” Su said.

Former California Assemblymember Gwen Moore Passes Away

 Tanu Henry |

Family members, friends, former colleagues and other loved ones across California were shocked to learn about the passing of former California Assemblymember Gwen Moore on Aug. 19. Her family has not yet announced the cause of her death.  Moore was first elected to the state legislature in 1978 and served for 16 years until 1994, representing California’s 49^th district (redistricted and renumbered in 1990 as the 47^th district), which currently includes Long Beach, Catalina Island and parts of Los Angeles and Orange counties.  While serving in the Assembly, Moore, introduced over 400 bills that were signed into law. She also served as Majority Whip and was a member of a number of influential committees, including the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee. 

 Moore was the architect and political force behind California General Order 156. It is a state supplier diversity program that has, over the years, strengthened and stabilized a number of California Black-owned, Women-owned and other minority-owned small businesses by helping them secure lucrative state contracts.  1n 1994, Moore resigned from the Assembly to run for Secretary of State. Although she didn’t win that race, Moore began to pursue other opportunities outside of elected office that influenced state policy and impacted the lives of people.  The founder and Chief Executive Officer of Los Angeles-based GeM Communications Group, Moore was a sought-after consultant and worked with several prominent clients across the state.  Her family, relatives, former colleagues and friends across California and the United States reached out to each other as the shocking news of her unexpected death was shared across her political, business and social circles.  Moore served on numerous boards.

Among them were the California State Bar Board of Trustees, the California Small Business Association board and the national board of the NAACP. She was also First Vice President of the California State Conference of the NAACP, Vice Chair of the California Utility Diversity Council and Chairwoman of the California Black Business Association. For her work in California and across the United States, Moore won numerous national and local awards, including honors from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

What You Should Know About Kamala Harris

Born and bussed to school in Berkeley, tested by San Francisco’s cut-throat municipal politics and propelled onto the national stage as the state’s top law enforcement officer and then its first female senator of color, Harris’ approach to politics and policymaking were honed here.

Although most Americans are now focusing on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s ticket pick — her political pedigree, her record on criminal justice, her reputation as (depending on your point of view) a pragmatic or an over-cautious political figure — we’ve seen it here in California for decades. 

Here are eight ways that California shaped Kamala Harris and that Harris has shaped California.

Harris spent her teenage years in Montreal, moving there with her sister and mother when Gopalan accepted a university research position there. She earned a political science and economics degree at Howard University in Washington D.C. but returned to California to get her law degree in 1989 at the University of California, Hastings in San Francisco.

She’s called California home ever since.

Fresh out of law school, she joined the Alameda County district attorney’s office in 1990, serving there eight years before crossing the bay to San Francisco. In 2003, she unexpectedly won election as San Francisco District Attorney, where she served two terms before her narrow election as state Attorney General in 2010. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016.

Despite in many ways reflecting the lessons described in her book Smart on Crime, which argued that non-violent criminals can be redirected into less punitive systems without jeopardizing public health, Harris, the state’s top law enforcement officer, was silent on the policy. 

That earned a rebuke from the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board, which wrote in its endorsement of her 2016 Senate candidacy that Harris “has been too cautious and unwilling to stake out a position on controversial issues, even when her voice would have been valuable to the debate.” 

What some critics call prevarication or flip-floppery, her supporters call pragmatism. Those are just two ways of describing the same quality, said Corey Cook, a political science professor at St. Mary’s College and a longtime observer of San Francisco politics.

“She’s not an ideologue,” he said, meaning rather than stake out the boldest, ideologically-coherent agenda, she tends to focus on individual fixes to specific problems. Hence the “3am agenda” of her presidential campaign, a collection of policy changes designed to address the problems that keep the average voter up at night.

“The idea that she would have consistent positions on issues informed by ideology isn’t who she is,” said Cook. Harris may appear to pick her battles, he said, because for her “the only lasting solutions are going to be the ones that are able to sustain a majority coalition of support.”

In an emailed statement last year, a spokesperson for Harris’ presidential campaign said that she “has spent her career fighting for reforms in the criminal justice system and pushing the envelope to keep everyone safer by bringing fairness and accountability.”

“Whether introducing an anti-recidivism program as San Francisco DA that has become a national model, implementing Open Justice, a first-of-its-kind criminal justice open data initiative, proposing a plan to the governor to implement independent investigations, or becoming the first state agency to require her agents to wear body cameras, Kamala has demonstrated a clear commitment to a transparent and progressive criminal justice system,” the statement said.

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